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The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – Turkish Style

The book The Chil­dren of Moses, which has become a best­seller in Turkey, accus­es “Inter­na­tion­al Zion­ism” of a con­spir­a­cy to strength­en the pow­er of the Islam­i­cists in the coun­try

by Ran Porat
Ome­dia — Pol­i­cy & Agen­da

A book resem­bling the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion has become a best­seller in Turkey. What makes this book so spe­cial is that the blood libel against the Jews takes on a new twist. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed the sto­ry.

The book is called The Chil­dren of Moses. Its cov­er shows Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan inside a Star of David. Reporter Mustafa Aky­ol writes that this is the first in a series of four vol­umes. The book argues that Erdo­gan and his con­ser­v­a­tive allies in the pro-Islam­ic par­ty are in fact cryp­to-Jews with secret ties to the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al forces of “glob­al Zion­ism.”

The book is not a rar­i­ty. Copies are on dis­play in book­shops, on Inde­pen­dence Avenue (Istik­lal), in the sec­u­lar part of Istan­bul and in Turkey’s inter­na­tion­al air­port. They are dis­played along­side a Turk­ish book with an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion by Pamuk Orhan. The pub­lish­ers claim that over 520,000 copies – an aston­ish­ing fig­ure – have been sold since it came out ear­li­er in the year.

The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion blamed “Inter­na­tion­al Jew­ry” for destroy­ing both Czarist Rus­sia and com­mu­nism as well as for the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. But this is the first time Jews have been blamed of all things for set­ting up an Islam­ic state. Most iron­i­cal­ly, the book por­trays Israel as allied with the Islam­ic Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP).

The author, Ergun Poyraz, is a self-declared Kemal­ist, i.e. a loy­al fol­low­er of Kemal Ataturk, who found­ed mod­ern Turkey in 1923. “Zion­ism has decid­ed to turn Turkey from its sec­u­lar path and make it a mod­er­ate Islam­ic repub­lic,” Poyraz main­tains in all seri­ous­ness, offer­ing no sup­port for his argu­ments, which are not doc­u­ment­ed and have no fac­tu­al back­ing.

A clear case of anti-Semi­tism does not spring from vir­gin soil. Last Feb­ru­ary saw the expo­sure of a fas­cist group call­ing itself the Union of Patri­ot­ic Forces, led by retired colonel Karadag Fikri. The group’s secret oath includ­ed the words, “I am of pure Turk­ish blood and there is no Jew­ish con­vert in my lin­eage.” Its mem­bers promised to “kill or be killed” so that “the Turk­ish nation will rule the world.”

In June, police found 27 hand grenades and sticks of dyna­mite in a house in Istan­bul belong­ing to one of the group mem­bers with shady links to some­one in the secu­ri­ty forces. The arrest led to oth­er cells and Poyraz, the anti-Semit­ic author, belonged to one of them. The lawyer hired to defend him was Kamal Ker­inc­siz, who is suing Nobel Prize-win­ning author Pamuk for “insult­ing the Turk­ish peo­ple.” The tri­al of Poyraz and his com­rades con­tin­ues.

This anti-Semit­ic book recalls a dark chap­ter in Turk­ish his­to­ry. When Ataturk died in 1942, his suc­ces­sor Mustafa Ismet Inonu imposed heavy tax­es tar­get­ing main­ly the Jews. When unable to pay, the Jews were sent to labor camps in East­ern Turkey.

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